BARCELONA, Spain — They say that sometimes the most successful products are the most boring ones.

That may (or may not) end up being the case with the apps IBM and Apple are creating together for the enterprise as part of their “MobileFirst for iOS” initiative. The two companies debuted three of the apps today here at Mobile World Congress.

There’s one for airline customer service workers, another for retailers, and yet another one for wealth managers.

All are designed to run on iPads and iPhones. Apple is hoping that the apps might give enterprises a good reason to buy more Apple hardware.

The first app IBM showed today is called Passenger Care. It’s aimed at airline industry people like flight attendants and customer service agents. The app contains all kinds of passenger, schedule, and airport information. It also helps in the event of a flight delay to get passengers rerouted, for example.

Another app, Dynamic Buy, is for retailers. It shows a bevy of analytics about the product flow from suppliers. It also provides data on what products are selling most, which are selling worst, and the revenue and profit levels that result.

Advisor Alerts is for wealth advisors to understand and prioritize tasks for various accounts. An account that manages more assets might get more immediate service than other accounts, for example.

The app gives the advisor a customer’s wealth level, how long they’ve been a client, and how profitable the client has been. The app brings in content from the CRM system.

IBM pointed out that the apps it’s building with Apple are deeply integrated with the back-end systems in the enterprise. Integrating the apps with enterprise systems is IBM’s main role in the partnership. Apple, apparently, mainly brings the clean app design to the party.

Each of the apps IBM and Apple will build will see a different manifestation, depending on the company that’s implementing them, IBM says. That is, the apps will be customized to a certain extent for each client.

Apple and IBM have now launched 14 apps, IBM says. IBM says it wants to build 100 apps with Apple in the first year of the partnership.

The companies say apps are now available to enterprise customers in the banking, retail, insurance, financial services, telecommunications, energy, utilities, and airline industries.

]]>0IBM and Apple announce three extremely bland apps for airlines, retailers, and banks11 Google apps you probably didn’t know existedhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/02/23/11-google-apps-you-probably-didnt-know-existed/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/23/11-google-apps-you-probably-didnt-know-existed/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 19:12:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1666299Feature:Google offers a myriad of widely used and well-liked digital services. But what about those that never make the headlines?
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Google introduced a brand new standalone app called YouTube Kids today, initially available in the U.S. only, which is its first product “built from the ground up with little ones in mind,” according to the Internet giant.

From Maps and Gmail to Translate and YouTube, Google already offers a myriad of digital services that are useful and generally well-liked. But what about all those other ones that garner little in the way of headlines or fanfare? Google actually has a ton of apps that generally fall under the mainstream radar. So here’s a look at some of those, and what they do.

Sound Search for Google Play

Available for Android only, Sound Search is a Shazam-style music-recognition widget that identifies whatever music is playing in the background wherever you may be. Needless to say, it links directly into Google Play, where you can procure the tagged tunes directly.

Google Authenticator

This is designed to prevent miscreants from hijacking your device and services, with the app serving up a six-to-eight digit password that users have to input in addition to their username and password. This covers Google services and third-party offerings, including file-hosting services and password managers.

Google Gesture Search

Launched back in 2010, Google Gesture Search is an Android-only app that lets you search for apps, settings, contacts, bookmarks, and more on your device simply by drawing numbers or letters with your finger on the screen.

Photo Sphere Camera

Photo Sphere Camera is available as a standalone app on iOS, though it essentially pulls together features already bundled directly within the Android operating system.

With Photo Sphere, you can create 360-degree, high-res panoramas and publish them directly to Google Maps, or browse other users’ uploads.

Google Opinion Rewards

Once you’ve answered a few questions about yourself, Google will then send a survey once a week on average, and you can receive up to $1 per questionnaire.

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is only available to organizations with an active Google Apps for Education account. It helps teachers create a centralized “paperless” silo to share assignments with their classes.

Available for Android and iOS, the app also serves as a social network of sorts, where students and teachers can discuss elements of assignments and share resources.

Field Trip

The Field Trip app comes courtesy of the Niantic Project, a sort of internal startup that operates within Google.

Available on Android and iOS, Field Trip is all about unearthing cool things and places around you in the real world. It runs in the background, and whenever you approach a noteworthy place, a card pops up on your phone with more details about the location.

Intersection Explorer

Available for Android only, Intersection Explorer hasn’t actually been updated in a while, so it’s not clear whether Google still officially “supports” the app.

Aimed at those with visual impairments, Intersection Explorer basically verbalizes the layout of streets and intersections in towns and cities, as you drag your finger around the map in front of you.

Ingress

Ingress is another creation from the vaults of Google’s Niantic Project, and it too is available on Android and iOS,

It’s a GPS-enabled augmented reality (AR) multiplayer role-playing game that invites players to create “portals” at public places, including monument and key landmarks. It basically transforms the physical world into a science-fiction game of mystery.

Big Web Quiz for Chromecast

Google’s Big Web Quiz for Chromecast pretty much does what it says on the box, with the Android and iOS app letting families and friends host quiz nights in their living rooms.

Questions are generated from Google’s Knowledge Graph, and they are beamed directly to the big screen (assuming you have Google’s $30 Chromecast HDMI dongle installed).

These are just a selection of slightly lesser-known apps from Google’s gargantuan library, not including ones you may well have forgotten are owned by Google, such as Snapseed, Zagat, and Waze. There are dozens more that may have slipped beneath your radar, either because they’re old or defunct, or because you have better things to do with your time than track Google’s many digital services.

]]>011 Google apps you probably didn’t know existedMarc Andreessen was right — people do love to fishhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/02/13/marc-andreessen-was-right-people-do-love-to-fish/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/13/marc-andreessen-was-right-people-do-love-to-fish/#commentsFri, 13 Feb 2015 20:35:52 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1661457FishBrain, an app and social network for anglers, just caught its 700,000th user.
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FishBrain, an app and social network for anglers, just caught its 700,000th user yesterday.

It is also releasing a new version of its app today, which includes a “FishBrain Forecast” feature that uses a combination of algorithms and crowdsourcing to help you figure out, based on the weather, time of year, and other factors, where the ideal fishing spots are.

The new app also includes a “Teams” feature so you can compete with your friends in impromptu fishing tournaments.

FishBrain is based in Stockholm, Sweden, but is used by people all over the world. According to the company, it is the largest fishing network around. The next-closest competitors appear to be Madison, Wisconsin-based Fishidy, which was aiming for 300,000 users by the end of 2014, and Houston, Texas-based FishingSkout, which claims 100,000 users on its iTunes page.

So clearly there are a lot of people who love to fish and don’t mind using an app to help them.

Last year, I got into a Twitter conversation with Andreessen and some journalists about whether a fishing app that had won a tech conference prize deserved the label of “disruptive technology.”

Andreessen schooled me, pointing out that fishing is a huge pastime for many people — and more than that, it’s an enormous industry.

Now we’ve got an additional data point showing that the man is a smart investor and trendspotter.

FishBrain, by the way, has not received any investment from Andreessen. The company got started in 2010, and recently took a $2.4 million investment led by Northzone and Active Venture Partners.

]]>0Marc Andreessen was right — people do love to fishPeter Thiel-backed Instapray app passes the 30 million prayer markhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/02/12/peter-thiel-backed-instapray-app-passes-the-30-million-prayer-mark/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/12/peter-thiel-backed-instapray-app-passes-the-30-million-prayer-mark/#commentsFri, 13 Feb 2015 02:30:30 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1660952Instapray is all about prayer, meditation, comfort, and faith -- and a lot of people are using it.
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In a lot of ways, the Internet is kind of a downer: haters, click bait, porn, celebrity gossip, trash talk, leaked nude photos, hostile YouTube comments, tweeting trolls. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said just last week that harassment on Twitter has become so out of hand that his company will make a special effort to ban the haters.

Then there’s this app called Instapray (free, for iOS and Android), which is all about prayer, meditation, comfort, and faith — and a lot of people are using it. The app just passed a major milestone: 30 million prayers have now been posted and/or shared through the app. That’s a whole lot of prayers.

Instapray forms a social community around prayers. Users can write orisons and add tags (including tagging people). They can send private messages to other users. They can comment on other people’s prayers and offer encouragement, or share those with others.

You could do these same things on Facebook, but most people wouldn’t want to pray on Facebook. It’s too public.

Reading this little testimonial from the Instapray website helped me get the drift:

“I was unable to sleep last night, missing my daughter. I was reading scriptures and web pages online trying to find some spiritual comfort. I posted prayers and within minutes I had over a dozen beautiful people praying from different countries. I no longer felt isolated and alone in my grief. What a blessing! So thankful for this app!”

Instapray is not a religious app exactly — it’s a prayer app. It doesn’t mention or even suggest any denomination.

Although Instapray has never announced it (until now), the app maker is backed by investment last year from superinvestor Peter Thiel and Founders Fund.

“I started Instapray to create a safe, supportive online community, a place free of the overwhelming negativity present across much of the Web,” Instapray founder and CEO Fryderyk Ovcaric said. “As online bullying has increased in recent years, with the rise of anonymous sharing apps amplifying this destructive and hateful behavior, I believe the world can benefit from Instapray now more than ever.”

Ovcaric came to the U.S. from Poland to get an MBA from Stanford. That’s where he got the idea for Instaprayer. “Some people thought it was crazy,” Ovcaric said. “But that’s the great thing about Stanford, they said ‘this is completely nuts but go and do it’.”

So using some leftover tuition money, Ovcaric hired a team of engineers back in Poland and started building the prayer platform.

Since the app is free, and since his company had taken a venture capital investment, I asked Ovcaric if there was a business model in play.

To which he replied that money was never part of the reason for launching the app. “It was never envisioned as a monetization platform,” Ovcaric said. He added, however, that monetization may be something his company will have to think about at some point in the future.

And Theil and Founders Fund were totally OK with that when they invested, Ovcaric said. “They never asked me that question,” he said. It’s not every day that someone comes into a venture capital firm and pitches a prayer app, after all.

It’s also not every day you see a business metric on a spreadsheet called “number of prayers shared.” But Instaprayer has more than 30 million of them, and that kind of engagement can’t be ignored.

]]>0Peter Thiel-backed Instapray app passes the 30 million prayer markeMarketer: Only a third of U.S. mobile users will pay for apps in 2015http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/05/emarketer-only-a-third-of-us-mobile-users-will-pay-for-apps-in-2015/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/05/emarketer-only-a-third-of-us-mobile-users-will-pay-for-apps-in-2015/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 15:59:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1656126Tablet users are slightly more likely to open their wallet, but it's still less than half.
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About 80.1 million U.S. consumers will pay for mobile apps at least once this year. That represents only 33.3 percent of all mobile users in the country, meaning two-thirds will choose to grab free apps or none at all.

The latest estimates come from independent market research firm eMarketer, which admits the total figure includes feature phones, meaning the chance of paying for a mobile app is artificially decreased. That said, if you look at just smartphone and tablet user groups, the number is still less than half.

More specifically, 35.8 percent of all U.S. smartphone users will purchase apps in 2015, or about 65.2 million people. Tablet users are slightly more likely to open their wallet: 44.0 percent of all U.S. tablet users, or 60.9 million people, will purchase, download, and install apps on their larger devices this year.

Furthermore, the state of the market isn’t expected to improve, at least according to eMarketer. “The preference for free, ad-supported apps is rising among mobile users, and the share of smartphone and tablet users who pay for apps will actually tick downward over the next four years, despite the continued growth in the number of smartphone and tablet users and the number of app users overall,” Cathy Boyle, senior mobile analyst at eMarketer, said in a statement.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made selling apps. Reading between the lines, while the share may be decreasing, the larger pie is still growing. The trick is creating, and marketing, an app that many will actually want to purchase.

eMarketer puts it succinctly: “Put a dollar sign in front of an app, and the number of people who are willing to download and install it drops dramatically.” Of course, this applies to almost anything: It’s easier to say no to paying for something if the default is free.

In fact, the firm also notes that while demand may be waning, supply is too. Developers know free apps are more popular, and have thus been steadily moving away from the pay-to-download model in order to attract a larger userbase.

Paid apps have their place (they still attract a sizable and loyal audience in certain categories), but the percentage of the marketplace is declining. In-app purchases, subscriptions, and in-app advertising are often seen as great ways to lure users in with a free download, and then hopefully monetize them later. If you’re building a mobile app nowadays, there are many more ways to make money, as long as you understand the market.

]]>0eMarketer: Only a third of U.S. mobile users will pay for apps in 2015Intercom launches Platform Chooser to bring device context to in-app messaginghttp://venturebeat.com/2015/01/22/intercom-launches-platform-chooser-to-bring-device-context-to-in-app-messaging/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/22/intercom-launches-platform-chooser-to-bring-device-context-to-in-app-messaging/#commentsThu, 22 Jan 2015 15:01:43 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1646499Platform Chooser shows the customer a notification first on the platform the company chooses, but, once read, the message is available across all platforms.
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When marketers personalize communications to prospects and customers, they employ all sorts of data and content to help make that message appear as if it is for you and you alone. However, one element of personalization still eludes many: device context.

Today, Intercom has added a feature to its communication platform, named Platform Chooser, that promises to solve the problem of device context for its customers.

Intercom’s Platform Chooser was born of internal necessity.

“It is a pretty obvious problem to us,” Brian Donohue, product manager at Intercom, told me via email. “We needed it ourselves when we were sending some channel-specific messages to our customers!”

Let’s say you offer both a web and mobile application. Customers primarily use the web app to get the full power of your product or service, tending to use the mobile app for quick analytics, summaries, or managing requests on-the-go.

“For many messages, you want to control not just who receives it, but also where they receive it,” Donohue said. “You might want to send a message to customers who’ve used your iOS app three times in the past week, and that’s something you’ve been able to do with Intercom — segmenting customers based on behavior. But you also might want to make sure they receive the message specifically on iOS. Many calls-to-action are platform specific, and you want to ensure your message works on the platform where they view it.”

Intercom’s new feature allows web and mobile app marketers — and customer support managers — to show messages in the most appropriate context to drive the desired customer action.

Context isn’t just limited to which device the customer is using at that time. “For some customer communications you just want to get it to them as soon as possible, such as updating billing information, so being able to have a message seen wherever a user logs in first is valuable,” Donohue said.

While many mobile app developers can personalize communications and send in-app messages to users, Intercom provides a communication platform that works across mobile and web apps. Intercom’s Platform Chooser is about where the user sees the message first. The customer receives a notification only on the platform you choose, but, once read on that platform, the message is available to deliver across all platforms.

“We decided to make messages appear on a specific platform first, rather than only on that specific platform, because we didn’t want to create silos,” Donohue said. “Customers expect a unified experience with a company across all platforms. We tried to enable platform targeting without sacrificing the simplicity of having everything synced everywhere.”

This means that users may see an “update billing” message first on the Intercom-powered web app, but afterwards they can still reference that message in their conversation list via iOS, Android, or whatever platform they’re on.

An Intercom app that allows for remote management and distribution of messages to users is available on both Android and iOS. Intercom also provides an SDK for iOS so that developers can bake its features into their apps, and an Android SDK is in beta.

]]>0Intercom launches Platform Chooser to bring device context to in-app messagingShould developers be forced to build apps for dying operating systems? BlackBerry thinks sohttp://venturebeat.com/2015/01/22/should-developers-be-forced-to-build-apps-for-dying-operating-systems-blackberrys-ceo-thinks-so/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/22/should-developers-be-forced-to-build-apps-for-dying-operating-systems-blackberrys-ceo-thinks-so/#commentsThu, 22 Jan 2015 12:27:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1647259Opinion:BlackBerry CEO John Chen has revealed some interesting thoughts on net neutrality, touching on what the definition of the term should encapsulate. And he reckons developers should be mandated to build applications for all mobile operating systems.
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How does BlackBerry plan to rescue its ailing mobile empire? Well, it’s not just banking on gold smartphones, it seems. It hopes regulation will help save its bacon.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has revealed some interesting thoughts on the much debated subject of net neutrality, touching on what the definition of the term should encapsulate. And interestingly, he reckons developers should be forced to produce applications for all mobile operating systems, not just the big players such as Android and iOS.

This has been a perennial problem for both BlackBerry and Windows Phone, with many big-name apps either taking their time to arrive on the scene, or simply never showing up at all. And this is bad news for them, because apps are seen as being key to success, irrespective of whether the hardware is any good.

Net neutrality

Generally speaking, net neutrality has come to define the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) and the relevant authorities should treat everything equally — a single tier where no website, application, or demographic is given preferential treatment, particularly for financial gain. It’s all about protecting the free and open Internet.

Chen, however, says that net neutrality should be regulated at the “application and content layer.” In a letter sent to a number of high-ranking U.S. Senate figures, which was later adapted for a blog post, Chen says:

Neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All wireless broadband customers must have the ability to access any lawful applications and content they choose, and applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system.

Chen goes on to cite Netflix, which has been a strong supporter of net neutrality at a carrier level, as one example of where companies fail to treat all operating systems equally. Indeed, the video-streaming service has hitherto failed to launch an app for BlackBerry, though it does have one for Windows Phone.

The CEO accuses Netflix of “discriminating” against BlackBerry customers, and “many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users.”

“This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems,” says Chen. “These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.”

While some may argue that Chen has a point on a very broad level, it’s important not to confuse the issue of net neutrality here. ISPs charging some companies or consumers more than others to deliver faster Web access goes against the very notion of a “free and open Internet.” Actively forcing private companies to build an app for a specific platform simply isn’t practical on any real level, and would not work.

Impractical

Who would these rules apply to? Just big companies with the resources to splash out on a BlackBerry app that will be used by so few people?

Think about it. There are thousands of indie developers out there, working away in their bedrooms to produce what they hope will be at least a minor smash hit on Google Play or Apple’s App Store. Are these individuals really expected to invest time and resources in learning how to build apps for a whole new operating system, one that will see very little in the way of financial return?

Even Android, which holds the lion’s share of mobile market in most countries, has had a tough time getting developers to adopt a “non-iOS first” mindset when building apps. But at no point has any sane person suggested that iOS developers be forced to code for Android. It would be nice if they did, sure, but it shouldn’t be legislated.

Chen even points to its own proprietary BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service as one example of how BlackBerry has opened its own services to third-party platforms.

“Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality,” he says. “Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service.”

Indeed, BBM finally launched on Android and iOS in 2013, meaning anyone could now message each other across different platforms. But this wasn’t done in the spirit of openness — BBM was one of the few BlackBerry offerings that still had a degree of traction on a consumer level, and this was its way of ensuring BBM didn’t die off.

Why did BBM take so long to land on Android and iOS? And why, after that, did it take so long to arrive on Windows Phone — almost a year later?

Chen also points to BlackBerry making its security-focused BES12 device management software available to iOS and Android. Again, BlackBerry has had to put a renewed focus on its software, making it available on multiple platforms — because its hardware business is no longer the force it once was.

To suggest that BBM or BES12 was launched on Android and iOS for any reason other than self-preservation would be disingenuous at best.

Innovation

BlackBerry basically rested on its laurels and was blindsided by the emergence of Apple and Google in the smartphone realm — it failed to innovate quickly enough and it’s now paying the price. This has happened to many other companies through the foggy ruins of time — companies that failed to adapt and move with the zeitgeist.

BlackBerry has already been pushing hard to open up to Android apps, but this doesn’t cover all apps and doesn’t support things like Google Play’s in-app purchase functionality. So developers still have to re-jig things for BlackBerry.

HTML5 is becoming increasingly used on mobile, bypassing the need for native apps altogether, but native apps still rule the roost on smartphones. What Chen is probably hoping for is a common coding language that spans all mobile operating systems — so that developers can easily tweak their handiwork so that apps work like a charm on all devices. However, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Chen’s logic makes sense on a broad level. He argues that net neutrality should extend to content in apps, which is currently siloed by operating systems — and why should access to content be restricted by a lack of interoperability?

But if that’s the argument, then Chen’s target shouldn’t be the content and application providers, because they merely work within the limitations of the operating systems. To suggest for a second that there should be an official mandate that stipulates which platforms a developer should build for is crazy and completely unworkable.

Last month, New Oriental Education, China’s largest provider of private educational services, and Tencent, the leading texting provider in China with nearly 500 million users on its WeChat app, agreed to launch an integrated, chat-centric education service. The question every university should be asking is: What does this mean for online learning?

Just 10 years ago, many of us thought online learning meant earning a degree anytime, anywhere. With smartphones, it’s now possible to learn on the move. The trade-off is efficacy. The holy trinity of online learning — content/lecture, discussion, assessment — doesn’t translate to smartphones. To wit:

Navigating content: Navigating curriculum is challenging on a smartphone. Not only because of the small screen, which requires buttons/areas large enough to be selected by thumbs, but also because we use smartphones differently; smartphone users are much more likely than PC users to abandon content that takes more than five seconds to load.

Discussion: Discussion boards can work well on smartphones. Ubiquity counts for a lot in discussions. Synchronous video discussions also work, but not for an entire cohort or section (more likely 1:1, as with FaceTime), and also for sessions much shorter than class-length. However, smartphone posts are likely to be much shorter and informal than faculty are used to (e.g., 140 characters).

Testing. Formative assessments work very well on smartphones both in a classroom environment and out of class. But summative assessments do not.

The common thread should be clear. Anything that can be done in short bursts can work well on a smartphone.

So will online education rise or fall based on our ability to reengineer learning for bursts, like New Oriental is doing with Tencent? There certainly will be many smartphone educational applications like this. But not for formal learning leading to assessments and recognizable credentials. There are two reasons for this. First, the extensive curricula and summative assessments required to impart such credentials can’t be reengineered for bursts. Second, they may not have to be, because apps open a different path.

Apps are the solution to the smartphone challenge

Smartphone users’ sessions are currently 3x longer when they’re using apps vs. browsing websites. Apps are also visited much more frequently than websites. Total time spent on apps is currently growing at an annual rate of over 20 percent, and according to comScore, for smartphone users, apps now account for over 50 percent of total time spent with digital media. 18-24-year-olds are the heaviest app users.

Apps are purpose-built. So it’s not a stretch to imagine one app for Economics 101 and another for Psychology 110. Apps are ideal for simulations and gamified learning experiences. They’re also perfect for incorporating real-world inputs (such as location of the student) into learning.

But today’s “mLearning” landscape ignores this. Current university apps aren’t about formal learning at all. They’re about course selection or scheduling or finding your way around campus. Or they’re peripheral to the learning experience (e.g., medical abbreviations dictionary). It’s instructive that on the Blackboard Mobile Learn site, product features are pictured on smartphones for all categories (announcements, grades) except actually accessing course materials, which is shown on a tablet. That’s mCheating, not mLearning.

So although most online degree programs are now delivered via learning management systems that claim to be “mobile platforms,” believing that the solution to the mobile problem is simply allowing mobile access to a course with traditional online architecture is tantamount to believing your institution’s online strategy is effectively addressed by putting lectures on YouTube or iTunes.

Ryan Craig is a founding Managing Director of University Ventures, an investment firm focused on enabling innovation from within colleges and universities. Ryan is the author of the forthcoming book, College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (March 2015, Palgrave Macmillan).

]]>0Why online learning needs to get serious about appsVB webinar: How ‘designing for place’ will make your mobile app stand out in 2015http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/14/vb-webinar-how-designing-for-place-will-make-your-mobile-app-stand-out-in-2015/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/14/vb-webinar-how-designing-for-place-will-make-your-mobile-app-stand-out-in-2015/#commentsWed, 14 Jan 2015 20:30:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1641978VB Webinar:Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific! Join us for this live webinar on Tuesday, January 20th at 10 am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern. Register here for free. If you plan to launch […]
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If you plan to launch an app in 2015, or beyond, you face the equivalent of throwing the proverbial needle into one of a number of haystacks.

Sure, it is possible to tie a metaphorical red ribbon on your needle to make it easier to find by using app store optimization techniques (ASO). However, even if consumers do pull your app out from the hay pile, there’s a one in five chance they’ll see it as ‘just another needle’, and throw it straight back.

So how can app developers ensure users retain and use an app until it becomes habit-forming? What unique features can they add that will make them stand out from the crowd?

I’ll be asking those exact questions in a webinar next week, where we’ll dig deep and answer them. In the meantime, I asked Mike Schneider, VP of Marketing at Skyhook to help explain how we got where we are today.

We download over 50 million apps a day. What do those that manage to get found and used have in common with each other? What is the secret sauce that makes them different from the masses that never succeed?

“The apps, which make it, are the ones that provide something vital to their users,” Schneider said. “They have a way of giving a user some kind of value whether it’s discovering something in the place they are, helping them find something they love based on what they read already, or getting something done more efficiently. It’s all about understanding your user and serving them the functionality they need in order to get into the everyday flow of the apps’ users.”

What do users want from an app that will make it part of their day-to-day, and how has that changed over the last few years?

“Users have become more sophisticated and so has the technology,” Schneider said. “The biggest thing, we are noticing, is that data is now being leveraged as a central part of the design process. Data-driven design is key to providing a vital experience, and building a great app is more than just coming up with a great idea and solving for it elegantly. App owners need to evolve continuously and get to know their users so they can anticipate what they want next not only in their road-maps, but in the next moment. ”

From VB Insight’s research into mobile user acquisition, mobile games monetization, and mobile app analytics, we know this to be true. A full grasp of past, present, and predictive data are fast becoming key to effective app development. But what has changed in marketing; finding users to download your app? What has changed the most in the way apps are promoted now versus four years ago?

“There’s a lot of promotion through paid channels, such as through social media,” Schneider said. “We can now target people based on their individual interests and needs. We can promote apps they may be more inclined to download, based on that personalization and targeting, through the channels they visit every day — like Facebook and Twitter. Specialized marketing companies have also arrived on the scene of app promotion. One example is Fiksu, a company who thrives in getting app downloads for companies.”

While targeting based on interests and needs ahead of the app download is part of the promotional mix now, the app itself still needs to be engaging. Location and proximity marketing were big themes at CES this year, and I wondered what part that data is playing in app, and user, retention?

“Knowing location behavior can tell you a lot about your users,” Schneider said. “Map the functionality they use to the places they are in, and you can find patterns in how your app is used when a person goes to those locations. You can then use that data to figure out how to design for those places. Adding something like Skyhook Context Accelerator can help simplify this process by geofencing any and all similar places while also triggering place-based experiences when the user goes to certain locations you designate. We call this process Appticipation.”

Designing for place is set to become a key driver in 2015 for any app developer that wants to make their product or service stand out from the crowd.

Join our webinar next week to get the latest research and case studies. You’ll find out how putting the ‘power of place’ to work in your app helps to anticipate user needs, monetize your app, and differentiate your app experience.

]]>0VB webinar: How ‘designing for place’ will make your mobile app stand out in 2015Pushing for holiday downloads? How to win the mobile user acquisition battlehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/12/20/pushing-for-holiday-downloads-how-to-win-the-mobile-user-acquisition-battle/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/20/pushing-for-holiday-downloads-how-to-win-the-mobile-user-acquisition-battle/#commentsSat, 20 Dec 2014 14:31:09 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1628093Guest:Preparing your campaigns in advance, establishing good relationships with ad networks and setting up marketing initiatives correctly will help you more through this holiday season with less stress and more strong wins.
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The holiday season is upon us, bringing purchases and gifts of shiny, new mobile devices to new users.

This tremendous growth and adoption is not only an opportunity for mobile developers to draw new and existing users to their apps but also a chance to generate significant revenue via their various marketing channels.

But finding the right audience for your app is not a trivial task.

It requires blending high volume acquisition with high value users. Adjusting these balances depending on your app’s lifecycle is paramount. For new apps, in order to get discovered and drive higher app store rankings, blending your media buying but with a skew towards volume is the best strategy.

For instance, new apps can set the following goals for their paid media buying:

40 percent on high value, high CPI users by using video ads to demonstrate the app experience

40 percent on high value users through Cost per Engagement model

Whether during the holidays or throughout the rest of the year, developers must start looking at aggressive A/B testing methods in order to help find their sweet spot. Regardless of stage, every developer needs to be critical of the media partners they engage with.

Platforms that allow for pricing fluctuation per user, and the ability to adjust based on user profile, choice of carrier, time of day, and geolocation.

Global footprints with a higher focus on high-value markets outside the U.S., such as South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Managing traffic acquisition during the holidays

The big players in the industry with healthy bankrolls are able to sustain high volumes of traffic even with a holiday increase in advertising costs. The same cannot be stated for smaller app developers who are not able to acquire enough traffic due to the increased cost.

Here are four basic guidelines that developers should consider:

Budgeting is an important initial step in preparing to run your marketing campaigns. Remember to set aside a part of the marketing budget to discover new audiences outside of your standard high performing segments.

As the holiday season approaches, focus on building up a solid, engaged user base through optimized and sustained campaigns up to the last week of November. As the fourth quarter of the year progresses, leverage this optimization to do smart bursts during the days leading up to the holidays. As the holiday bursts are running, it is important to assess the acquired organic users and include this while calculating your ad ROI.

As your organic uplift increases I strongly recommended you attribute this to the various channels being used. Keep driving organic users by using timed, recurring smaller bursts. Weekends are most important for games, Mondays and Fridays work best for dating apps, while business and education apps peak in adoption during Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

As with all revenue-generating initiatives, it is important to incorporate post-install metrics tracking. Use this in assessing ROI and — more importantly — in optimizing your media spend.

Tying it all together and other helpful tips

Marketing acquisition costs are expensive and are even more so during the holiday season. Spending marketing dollars smarter during these peak seasons is paramount. Preparing your campaigns in advance, establishing good relationships with ad networks and setting up marketing initiatives correctly will help you more through this holiday season with less stress and more strong wins.

Harish Thimmappa is VP of Mobile User Acquisition at Supersonic and has worked with many major app developers across the globe. With over seven years of experience in Mobile UA, and two years in strategic consultancy, Harish has worked with many large-scale brands including IBM, Yahoo, InMobi, and, since 2013, Supersonic.

]]>0Pushing for holiday downloads? How to win the mobile user acquisition battleFleksy’s mobile keyboard app gets ‘Extensions’ and branded themes in the push for more revenueshttp://venturebeat.com/2014/12/17/fleksy-keyboard-app-gets-extensions-and-branded-themes-as-it-pursues-personalization-to-drive-revenues/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/17/fleksy-keyboard-app-gets-extensions-and-branded-themes-as-it-pursues-personalization-to-drive-revenues/#commentsWed, 17 Dec 2014 13:59:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1626720Today, Fleksy is lifting the lid on its next moves to monetize its app on Android and iOS. In addition to a general redesign and a bucketful of new themes, Fleksy has overhauled its in-app store, and customization is at its core.
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When Apple opened up iOS to third-party keyboard apps this year, a slew of startups rejoiced as the move effectively opened up their service to hundreds of millions more users.

One of those companies was San Francisco-based Fleksy, which arrived on the scene shortly after iOS 8 launched with a system-wide version of its popular keyboard app.

Today, Fleksy is lifting the lid on its next moves to monetize the app on Android and iOS.

What Fleksy has in Store

In addition to a general redesign and a bucketful of new themes, Fleksy has overhauled its in-app store, which is now divided into Themes, Extensions, and Sizes. It’s here where you customize the app, purchase new themes, and more. But it’s the Extensions that are particularly interesting.

Now, you can drag-and-drop extra functionality to your keyboard, which lets you add features such as a numbers row.

Feeding in to Fleksy’s new monetization model is the ability to purchase additional slots, so you can have more than three Extensions at any given time, and there’s scope for the company to add even more Extensions to the app over time.

While other keyboard apps also let you customize your themes, and SwiftKey already includes keyboards with number rows on them, Fleksy is looking to move further beyond plain text with the inclusion of a GIF extension.

Yes, the seemingly never-ending deluge of animated images online is set to continue, with Fleksy now letting its users search and send GIFs directly from their keyboard, similar to what Riffsy is striving for with its own standalone iOS app.

With the latest update, Android users will have exclusive access to two Extensions — Launcher and Invisible Keyboard. The former pulls together your most commonly used apps to make them more readily available from the keyboard, while the latter lets you type with the keyboard hidden — you see just a faint outline The keyboard area is shown with a faint outline on your screen.

Digging a little deeper into Fleksy’s latest update reveals some interesting nuggets that reflect a bigger trend in the keyboard app space.

Branding

Remember, SwiftKey launched branded keyboards earlier this week, kicking off with Disney’s Frozen? Well, Fleksy too has introduced branded keyboard themes costing $1.99, and it’s also kicking off with Frozen. However, Fleksy has an additional branded theme available, in the form of The Hunger Games.

Today’s move is revealing on a number of levels, beyond that of simple monetization.

Earlier this year, Fleksy launched its in-app theme store just six weeks after SwiftKey, and now it’s also launching branded themes just days after SwiftKey. Clearly, there is a great degree of synergy between these companies.

Fleksy does offer a slew of neat unique features too, as you’ll see with its new Chameleon theme, which changes color depending on what app you’re using.

There are many examples of how lucrative digital content can be for companies. Messaging app Line has sold $30 million worth of user-generated stickers alone in the first six months. So it’s clear that Fleksy, SwiftKey, and others in this space are on to a winner, with personalization at the core of their respective offerings.

“Customization is extremely important to our users,” explains Fleksy COO and cofounder Ioannis Verdelis. “We’re excited to meet that need through an unprecedented level of customization with our biggest theme update ever and the launch of Extensions. These Extensions are just the beginning too.”

Google Analytics for mobile is essentially a monopoly, with almost 95 percent market share on Android. But the highest-rated apps use analytics packages like Mixpanel, Kochava, and Tune’s MobileAppTracking.

And on iOS, Flurry is the market leader, with about 36 percent share.

Those are just two of the findings in a new report on mobile app analytics by VB Insight. Using Mixrank data on over 1.8 million apps and developer insights straight from mobile developers with over 250 million currently active users, it’s clear that while the analytics ecosystem is heavily dominated by just two players, there’s serious competition at the high end.

One example is Tune’s MobileAppTracking.

With just .2 percent of the Android app analytics market, Tune is being used by no fewer than seven of the top 20 highest-grossing Google Play apps. Similarly, with only two percent share on iOS, Tune’s MobileAppTracking is embedded in eight of the top 20 grossing apps, including Supercell’s massive hits Hay Day and Clash of Clans.

Another “small” solution with just a fraction of Google Analytics’ penetration actually led developer ratings as scored by app publishers who actually use the tools. 55 percent of developers said Localytics pure analytics capability was either Very Good or Excellent, and 52 percent said it was Very Good or Excellent at helping build user engagement. Those scores may not sound high, but Google scored 30 percent in building engagement, and Adobe’s analytics package scored 20 percent.

The most interesting result?

Despite Google’s massive market share, fewer than a third of mobile developers consider it their primary app analytics solution.

Most mobile developers and publishers use more than one analytics solution. And interestingly, the more successful developers are, the more likely they are to use multiple solutions.

Big Fish Casino, for instance — the fourth-highest grossing app on iOS — uses no fewer than five: Flurry and TestFlight and BugSense and Tune and Kochava. Racing Rivals, the 13th-highest grossing app on Google Play, uses five as well: Google Analytics and Flurry and BugSense and Tune and Amazon Insights.

The crown for the ratings king, however, belongs to Kochava.

Again, a tiny solution by marketshare with just a fraction of a percent, Kochava is not only used by apps like Domino’s Pizza, Radio Disney, and Sega’s Sonic Dash, it also helps developers build superlative user experiences. In fact, apps with Kochava’s SDK installed are rated 14.2 percent higher by their users than average apps.

That’s impressive.

Mobile publishers who are hoping to have the same app analytics suites on both iOS and Google Play should think twice, the study makes clear. The platforms are different and require different solutions. Just one example is Apsalar, one of the outstanding analytics solutions on iOS and a VB Insight recommended pick on that platform.

On Android, however, the solution has been uninstalled 14,000 times for every 1,000 current installs — a huge red flag. Clearly, analytics solutions need to be evaluated on their own merits on each platform individually.

Summing up the qualitative data provided by app developers and the quantitative data on 1.8 million apps in the iOS app store and Google Play, two paths for success become clear.

First: use one of the major platforms (Google or Flurry) as your default solution. And second, pick additional app analytics partners carefully, depending on what mobile development or marketing factor matters most to you right now: user experience, user acquisition, engagement, monetization, or pure analytical power.

]]>0230 developers and 1.8M apps reveal the best mobile app analytics solutionsXamarin now lets students build native Android and iOS apps for freehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/11/05/xamarin-now-lets-students-build-native-android-and-ios-apps-for-free/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/05/xamarin-now-lets-students-build-native-android-and-ios-apps-for-free/#commentsWed, 05 Nov 2014 19:52:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1597206Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on March 6 Pacific! Xamarin today announced two new education initiatives for students and one for educators. For all three, the goal is the same: get more people building […]
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Xamarin today announced two new education initiatives for students and one for educators. For all three, the goal is the same: get more people building apps with its tools.

The biggest component is a new student program that lets students build native Android and iOS apps with Xamarin Studio for free. The offering is open to students currently enrolled in a degree or diploma-granting course of study.

The second part also involves students: The Xamarin Student Ambassador Program asks for help bringing cross-platform mobile development to campuses around the globe. Student ambassadors are asked to help their peers build mobile apps in C# using Xamarin.

If that sounds right up your alley, here’s what you’ll get in return:

The opportunity to work hand-in-hand with the global Xamarin team

Free subscriptions to Xamarin Business for iOS, Android, and Mac

Xamarin swag for you and your peers

Unique opportunities to participate in Xamarin Evolve and other in-person events

The ability to audit Xamarin University courses for free

The last point brings us to the third announcement. Xamarin also wants to give free software and educational materials to educators at accredited academic institutions who are teaching (or are considering teaching) a course related to mobile development.

For those who don’t know, Xamarin first made a name for itself by bringing .NET to Android and iOS developers. The company also partnered with Microsoft to bring its tools directly into Visual Studio. Xamarin’s message eventually shifted to being the startup that provides cross-platform mobile development tools.

The education push is one that many businesses, from startups to corporations, regularly experiment with. The idea is simple: If we can get students using our tools, hopefully they’ll continue to do so after they graduate. In other words, get them while they’re young.

San Francisco — Twitter’s developer conference in the city by the Bay, called Twitter Flight, was really about extending an olive branch to app developers.

At Flight, the microblogging site’s CEO Dick Costolo took the stage for the keynote at 10:00 a.m. PT and quickly made clear Twitter’s commitment to working with outside app developers and partners for the long haul. Twitter has sometimes enjoyed a difficult relationship with developers, but this could likely change after today.

Costolo announced Fabric, which he said was created to help app developers design killer products and provide support during the building process. Fabric, which is free, will also give developers a pipeline to report problems in the development process via Crashlytics. Costolo also made it clear that mobile ads were an important part of his company’s strategy.

“(Fabric) always provides you with the needs and services you need and want and is entirely about building direct ties between you and your users. Not us,” Costolo said.

Costolo noted a few of Fabric’s partners: McDonald’s, Spotify, Jawbone, and The Wall Street Journal, all of which were seated in the audience and are now using Fabric.

“All of us are so excited to be here today to unveil what we believe is the future of mobile software development,” Costolo said.

Twitter Flight comes a few days away from reporting its fourth quarter earnings. In the third quarter, Twitter saw a huge amount of traffic with the results of the World Cup in Brazil, which boosted their revenues. Twitter was forced to reveal, however, that people were spending less time on the site than previously.

Costolo noted there are three facets to Fabric:

– Crashlytics, which Twitter owns, will assist developers in the process phase of app development. Crashlytics will help developers test and build their apps as well as debug them. This is likely to create a vast repository of intelligence for Twitter and developers in what works building apps … and what doesn’t.

– MoPub, a mobile ad platform, was bought by Twitter for about $350 million last year. Costolo said MoPub has taken a front seat in a bid to help app developers monetize their products on the Twitter platform. This is clearly an olive branch, because it shows that Twitter needs outside developers to build new products that will sell the Twitter brand. And it illustrates Twitter’s belief that mobile is the future.

– TwitterKit was also unveiled today. It enables apps to integrate into Twitter for streamlining real-time information. (For example, Citymapper will now Tweet live information on BART trains to users.) TwitterKit allows developers to embed Tweets natively, as well as allows users to log into apps via Twitter.

Another aspect of TwitterKit is Digits, a new SMS-based sign-in protocol that allows users to sign in to mobile apps. Digits makes it easier to use text verification instead of entering your entire log-in and password. The name of the game here is speed.

Many in the audience clapped. But some were more circumspect about Fabric, saying it’s too early to tell what it all means in the long run.

Clari app developer Kyle Buza told VentureBeat that his company has not had great success using Crashlytics and instead uses Crittercism. The vast majority of Twitter’s new offerings Wednesday failed to impress him, especially Digits.

“These are mainly consumer-oriented products used by people to integrate Twitter and to monetize their products. The general sentiment of Twitter is a history of not playing particularly well with developers historically, so there is some hesitation by some of us,” Buza said.

Buza also said Twitter’s new Digits authentication doesn’t do anything for him, because the authentication process has never been a “pain point for developers.”

“It’s not clear to me what Digits offers that will make my life that much easier. Native iOS also has ways to do authentication too,” he said.

Costolo then introduced Crashlytics co-founder and Fabric product manager Jeff Seibert, who took the stage to offer his take.

“Twitter started on mobile. From it’s launch years ago as SMS-based product, Twitter has evolved along with the mobile ecosystem. Over that time, they have become deeply familiar with the entire range of challenges that all of you have experienced building these apps,” Seibert said.

Seibert was nothing if not enthusiastic about outside developers building apps for Twitter, making the platform better and even making money.

“Whether you’re building for iOS or for Android, or whether you’re a student in a dorm room, or you’re a large multinational, these challenges are the same. When we started Fabric over a year ago, our goal was simple: How can we solve as many as these challenges as possible?” he asked.

“We believe that by bringing together Crashlytics, Twitter, and MoPub, that we can create a platform that can solve these challenges, not just for us, but for all of you gathered here today …. So let’s dive in.”

]]>0At Flight, Twitter's Dick Costolo extends an app-infused olive branch to developersMicrosoft releases final Kinect SDK 2.0 and starts accepting Kinect apps in the Windows Storehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/10/22/microsoft-releases-final-kinect-sdk-2-0-and-starts-accepting-kinect-apps-in-the-windows-store/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/22/microsoft-releases-final-kinect-sdk-2-0-and-starts-accepting-kinect-apps-in-the-windows-store/#commentsWed, 22 Oct 2014 15:55:34 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1584698Microsoft today released the final Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0, which you can download now for free directly from Microsoft.com. The launch means developers can now finalize their apps for the Kinect v2 sensors and begin to commercial deploy them. At the same time, Microsoft today also launched the Kinect Adapter for Windows, priced at […]
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Microsoft today released the final Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0, which you can download now for free directly from Microsoft.com. The launch means developers can now finalize their apps for the Kinect v2 sensors and begin to commercial deploy them.

At the same time, Microsoft today also launched the Kinect Adapter for Windows, priced at $50 (available in over two dozen countries today, and coming to a total of 41 in the “coming weeks”). The adapter enables you to use the Kinect for Xbox One with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 via a USB 3.0 port.

Earlier this month, Microsoft started selling a standalone version of Kinect for Xbox One. If you purchase that sensor along with the adapter, the final price is equivalent to buying the existing Kinect for Windows v2 sensor. Microsoft promises that with the adapter, “all Kinect v2 sensors—Kinect for Windows v2 and Kinect for Xbox One—perform identically.”

To round all this out, Microsoft has now started accepting Kinect apps in the Windows Store. Developers have been begging the company for a while now, and Redmond has finally delivered on what it calls a “frequent request.”

To show off some Windows apps featuring gesture control, body-tracking, and object recognition, Microsoft ensured some of its partners could add their work to the Windows Store early. Some of these include Kinect Evolution (a Microsoft app that shows off Kinect for Windows v2 technology), YAKiT (a character animation app from the developers at Freak n’ Genius), and 3D Builder (an app for scanning a person or object, turning it into a 3D model, and 3D printing that model).

Microsoft kicked off a hardware and software preview of the Kinect for Windows v2 in November 2013. The company then followed up with a public preview in July, promising to release a final version “in a few months.”

Since then, the company says it has made over 200 improvements and updates to the SDK, including enhancements to Visual Gesture Builder, Kinect Studio, and Kinect Fusion. Microsoft reminds us there are no fees for runtime licenses of commercial applications developed with the SDK.

Developers, start your 3D engines.

]]>0Microsoft releases final Kinect SDK 2.0 and starts accepting Kinect apps in the Windows StoreMicrosoft launches OneNote Class Notebook Creator app for teachers, Office 365 subscription requiredhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/10/07/microsoft-launches-onenote-class-notebook-creator-app-for-teachers-requires-an-office-365-subscription/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/07/microsoft-launches-onenote-class-notebook-creator-app-for-teachers-requires-an-office-365-subscription/#commentsTue, 07 Oct 2014 16:15:37 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1570632Microsoft today launched OneNote Class Notebook Creator, an app designed to help teachers do their job in the paperless age. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can download the app now for free directly from the Office Store. By offering a personal workspace to every student, Microsoft is promising the app will help […]
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Microsoft today launched OneNote Class Notebook Creator, an app designed to help teachers do their job in the paperless age. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can download the app now for free directly from the Office Store.

By offering a personal workspace to every student, Microsoft is promising the app will help achieve the following:

Make it easier to collect homework, quizzes, exams, and handouts.

Enable all student work and teacher feedback to be exchanged automatically in one place virtually anytime, anywhere.

Combine real-time, individualized coaching of a shared notebook with the collaborative creativity of OneNote and digital handwriting.

OneNote Class Notebook Creator is broken up into three sections. The first is for notebooks, which allows teachers to look at each individual student’s work. Teachers can access the private notebooks at any time, but students naturally cannot see each other’s notebooks.

The other two sections are the content library and the collaboration space. The former is used to hand out course materials to students and the latter is a place for anyone in the class to share, organize, and collaborate.

IT administrators can install the OneNote Class Notebook Creator app for teachers by following this guide. A separate interactive guide is also available for teachers over on onenoteforteachers.com.

OneNote Class Notebook Creator was created by the OneNote team in partnership with Microsoft Research and Microsoft China. Microsoft says the groups used feedback from teachers who wanted to help improve OneNote for the classroom. Now that the app is available, educators everywhere can continue the feedback loop by emailing OneNoteEDU@microsoft.com.

The first investor in traditional web-based marketing automation trailblazer Marketo has led an over-subscribed $15 million second round of investment into mobile marketing automation solution Appboy.

Above: Mark Ghermezian

For CEO Mark Ghermezian, that’s a significant shift.

“A huge portion of the new mobile marketers never grew up on the web; some barely know what cookies are,” he told me via email. “It’s logical, as far as I am concerned, that the size of this market would eventually outstrip that of B2B marketing automation.”

Marketing automation systems such as Marketo and Hubspot incorporate analytics, email, landing pages, and other features to understand, engage, and build a closer relationship with prospects and customers. Mobile marketing automation systems use app analytics, segmentation, mobile messaging, and in-app incentives to engage and monetize mobile app and mobile game users.

Companies like Localytics, Urban Airship, Tapjoy, Swrve, LeanPlum, DeltaDNA, and of course Appboy are leading the industry.

Appboy says it’s more than doubled its business since the beginning of the year, helping brands like USA Today, Shutterfly, and Urban Outfitters improve their mobile apps. Ghermezian told me that he’ll use the new funds to accelerate growth via increased spending on sales and marketing, plus more infrastructure to meet expanding demand.

“Mobile has exploded in the last two years, and we don’t see this slowing at all in the foreseeable future,” he added.

Above: Mobile marketing automation

Image Credit: Appboy

The $15 million cash injection was led by InterWest Partners, which was the first VC firm to invest in Marketo. Interwest General Partner Doug Pepper will be joining the startup’s board of directors, and he says there are significant similarities between Marketo years ago and Appboy today.

“The Appboy team reminds me of the early days of Marketo,” he said in a statement. “Traditional marketers have been using CRM and conversion-testing platforms for years; however, those conventional techniques do not translate perfectly to mobile. As marketers become more experienced with mobile, it will be crucial to adopt techniques to effectively cultivate personal relationships with their audiences.”

I asked Ghermezian about competitors, as this is an exploding space with the already-mentioned companies, plus others such as Upsight (Kontagent), Kahuna, PushSpring, Nudge, Playfab, and Playnomics.

He didn’t seem worried, saying that the market was in its extreme early stages, with just single-digit penetration.

“In any hot market, you’ll get competitors. The key is always execution and team. There will be some companies which are unable to get traction for one reason or another, and I see them being rolled up, but I don’t see any consolidation until we see a slowing in the market expansion, and that is not happening,” he said. “There are more than 1,200 submissions to the App store every day. Google Play has a similar number. That’s a lot of opportunity.”

That means we’re likely to follow a similar trajectory — and that app publishers who want to win will need to gun up for this fight.

Ghermezian puts it this way:

“For every app, there simply must be a strategy beyond the download,” he told me. “There is a clear distinction between apps that take their post-install marketing seriously and those that do not. It is the difference between app-success and app-failure. The irony is that this is the cheapest part of the user engagement cycle … instead of dollars per download, it’s pennies per user.”

]]>0Mobile marketing automation leader Appboy scores $15M to increase app & game engagementStarting up in China a ‘big advantage’ for App Annie, the Switzerland of app analyticshttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/24/starting-up-in-china-a-big-advantage-for-app-annie-the-switzerland-of-app-analytics/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/24/starting-up-in-china-a-big-advantage-for-app-annie-the-switzerland-of-app-analytics/#commentsWed, 24 Sep 2014 15:38:41 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1559854App Annie adds fuel to the fire of those who believe that while San Francisco may no longer be the best place in the world to start a tech company, it’s probably still the best place in the world to scale a tech company.
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App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt can’t easily remember exactly how many devices he owns. He was carrying three when I met him at App Annie global headquarters off Geary Street in San Francisco: an iPad Mini, an Android, and what looked like a Windows phone.

“Because of our business, I like to have at least one of every major platform,” he told me, mentioning his Surface Pro, MacBook Pro, and other tablets, phablets, and phones.

“At least, that’s what I tell my wife.”

The current time zone might be just as easy to forget. Schmitt, a trilingual native Frenchman who started App Annie in Beijing after marrying a Taiwanese woman and living in China for a couple of years, just moved to San Francisco this week. He is now working out of the company’s West Coast head office.

600,000 apps and counting

His company, App Annie, is killing it.

Its recent deal with Facebook to provide third-party analytics to mobile marketers on how their Facebook user-acquisition campaigns are going is just one more bit of evidence that it is, if not the,leader in the field, it’s at least one of a select club of leaders. The company provides free analytics and cost/revenue dashboards for 90 percent of the top 100 mobile app publishers and over 600,000 apps total.

In exchange, it gains access to the rich aggregated user data from those apps and then sells it to major mobile publishers, VCs, hedge funds, and big Internet platforms in subscription deals worth tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Few startups from Beijing — or China itself — can claim a similar trajectory. And yet, that early beginning 6,000 miles from the self-proclaimed epicenter of the startup world was critical to App Annie’s success.

“Most of our engineering is in Beijing,” Schmitt says. “Starting there was a big advantage.”

The cost of a good engineer in San Francisco, of course, can range well into six figures. Engineers in China? More like $40,000. Which, of course, is a major factor in being able to hire the way most startups would like to, even if they don’t have Uber-like billion-dollar bank accounts.

In fact, with Facebook onboard, the company has really only one global ad network and major mobile media property left to tackle. App Annie already supports Google’s AdMob, Tapjoy, InMobi, AdColony, NativeX, Apple’s iAd, and 20 or so other major networks thanks mostly to its refusal to play favorites to anyone — it’s Switzerland, essentially — or to start its own ad network.

One gaping hole

But there is one gaping hole: Twitter. And, of course, the ad network Twitter purchased just before going public, MoPub.

Schmitt disagrees, citing technological challenges as the core issue for Twitter. And, he says, Twitter is perhaps not as weak as might be presumed.

“They’re good in different places,” he told me. “Twitter [the overall company] is more focused on helping publishers make money via MoPub display advertising, while Twitter [the social news service] itself is more focused on enabling mobile user acquisition.”

While Twitter is the last global network App Annie needs to claim virtual ubiquity among the majors, plenty of regional players remain outside the App Annie universe.

About half of App Annie’s business is in the U.S., with Japan and China its second and third largest markets, respectively — and growing fast. With much of App Annie still in Asia — 120 employees in China alone — that’s a more important market to App Annie than Europe, where it is also making inroads.

Scaling in San Francisco

The company now employs about 260 people, of which perhaps 75 are in San Francisco. That’s where most of the employee growth is now, Schmitt says.

While S.F. talent is pricey (Schmitt grimaces when I mention this) and top Beijing talent is relatively cheap, it was clear from the start, Schmitt says, that the product would not just focus on China. And that it would not always hire the team from where labor is inexpensive.

“Eventually … price is not the only parameter,” he says. “You need to find the right people for global marketing, and finding global product people in China is not so easy … there are not so many of them.”

All of which, of course, adds fuel to the fire of those who believe that while San Francisco may no longer be the best place in the world to start a tech company, it’s probably still the best place in the world to scale a tech company.

]]>0Starting up in China a ‘big advantage’ for App Annie, the Switzerland of app analyticsSocial-casino games on mobile are making up for the shrinking Facebook markethttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/23/social-casino-games-on-mobile-are-making-up-for-the-shrinking-facebook-market/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/23/social-casino-games-on-mobile-are-making-up-for-the-shrinking-facebook-market/#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 16:45:01 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1559444Spending was up 8 percent thanks to more players entering the segment on smartphones and tablets.
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Social-casino games made more money in August than in July, but no thanks to Facebook.

Slots, cards, and other casino video games made $212.1 million last month, according to intelligence firm SuperData Research. That’s up 8 percent from July despite the fact that Facebook is losing monthly active players as well as earnings. The increase is due to mobile’s continued growth.

Social-casino apps on smartphones and tablets generated $104.4 million during August, which is up 22 percent over the previous month. This category of games is one of the most popular on social networks and mobile-app stores, and it’s responsible for a significant portion of the $16 billion consumers spent on mobile last year.

“Typically, a cyclical monthly active user dip occurs in June, July, and August,” reads SuperData’s report. “[But the PC’s current] player loss seems to be more permanent. Desktop players are abandoning social casino for mobile versions or leaving the genre all together.”

SuperData points out, however, that the players sticking around on Facebook are highly engaged. That means they’re more likely to spend money.

At the same time, developers are finding that players are also spending more money on mobile. The report specifically highlights strong performance from mobile releases Gold Fish Casino and House of Fun as examples of apps pushing overall revenue up for the month. Gold Fish generated nearly $1 million in revenue while House of Fun brought in more than $3 million, according to SuperData.

Above: Some info on tablets from SuperData.

Image Credit: SuperData Research

Adding to the strength of mobile is the high demand for social-casino games on tablets. SuperData found that 86 percent of players in this category intend to buy a new tablet within the next year. Of casino and slots players with tablets, one in every four check in on their games multiple times a day. More than two-thirds are checking in at least three times per week.

Even though the average tablet owner doesn’t use the device primarily as a gaming machine, iPads and the Android slates give social-casino apps a serious performance boost.

]]>0Social-casino games on mobile are making up for the shrinking Facebook marketPush notifications don't have to be so annoying — here's howhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/22/push-notifications-dont-have-to-be-so-ing-annoying-heres-how/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/22/push-notifications-dont-have-to-be-so-ing-annoying-heres-how/#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 03:03:15 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1541515Guest:Push notifications can serve as critical reminders -- they’re just misused in today’s app marketplace. iOS 8 will help, but developers need to keep a few key points in mind, too.
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When did push notifications get such a bad rap?

There has been a fair amount of controversy lately around something that was once revolutionary for the smartphone user: the push notification. Some critics, like Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times, argue that the beeping and buzzing meant to alert you to important updates has turned into somewhat of an annoyance, and I can’t say I disagree.

It seems like every app today lights up your phone with another meaningless message, and these notifications are worse than an unhelpful email. For example, my favorite music streaming app sends me recommendations via push. But these recommendations are an annoyance in the morning when I’m tying my daughter’s shoes and my son is calling from across the house.

When overused, push notifications bother you, take up space in your taskbar and can be nothing more than a push to get you to open the app.

So it’s easy to see that today’s push notifications are part of a broken system.

However, from both a user and developer perspective, push notifications can serve as critical reminders — they’re just misused in today’s app marketplace. Yet they’re moving in the right direction, and iOS 8 will make notifications more pertinent, interactive, and useful.

So how can we redefine push notifications to make them beneficial to all parties? Here are a few recommendations:

First, push notifications should be used when something is urgent. At their core, after all, they are about interrupting your activity and demanding your immediate attention. Therefore, the only kind of notifications you should be getting are the essential ones worthy of an interruption.

Even those people who usually disable push can think of an instance when a notification saved the day, or at least made it a little bit easier. For example, the standard ten minute reminder for a meeting you had forgotten about.

Second, push should be personal. Part of the reason users are abandoning ship is not because they hate the practice entirely; it’s because they’re being spammed with mass-market notifications. App developers should focus on updates that are specific to the user.

Of course users want a notification saying that their flight time has changed, but do they really want the buzz in the middle of the night asking them to rate the new app version?

Third, push notifications should provide information in the notification. From a news headline to contact details, the notification shouldn’t be just a ploy to drive users to the app. If something is urgent enough to bother a user, the deliverable should be right up front. If the user wants more information, like to read the full story from a breaking news alert, he or she can open the app to get context.

In our eyes, the perfect push notification is a miniature brief with essential information — nothing more, nothing less. A great example is Google Now, which sends a push notification when you need to leave to make it to an event on time. By syncing with your calendar and checking traffic, it lets users skip the step of monitoring the time, checking traffic and plotting a route. All the information is at users’ fingertips when they swipe down from the top of their screens.

We try to implement this strategy to create the best possible notifications at Refresh. We send push notifications with a contact’s background and suggested talking points right before you’re scheduled to see them. People don’t even have to open the app to figure out who they’re meeting and how to connect with them.

It’s time for app developers to wise up and reexamine the way they’re using push. My advice: don’t bother your users if it’s not important, make it personal, and provide information up front. After all, the point is for companies to anticipate users’ needs and address them with the swipe of a finger. And users, it might just be time to give push notifications another chance.

Bhavin Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Refresh, an iOS and web app that finds common ground with the people you meet. Bhavin has over a decade of experience building companies, and has taken companies in the education, toy and video game industries from inception to scale and from private to public. He was a co-founder and COO at Gazillion Entertainment, which grew to over 150 employees, and was the Director of Business Development at Leapfrog. He holds numerous patents on learning and incentive systems, and was the director of NASA’s EarthKam program.

Big Health CEO Peter Hames had a stressful day Wednesday. His Sleepio app, which was built using Apple’s HealthKit application programming interface (API), was supposed to launch in the App Store with the release of Apple’s new iOS 8 mobile operating system. Wealth and fame would follow. And people would sleep better.

But like so many other HealthKit app developers that day, Hames’ hopes were dashed when Apple informed developers that the HealthKit health data platform was buggy and would not be fixed until the end of September at best.

But Hames was determined. His team scrambled to unhook the Sleepio app from HealthKit and release it in stand-alone form. Sleepio is now live in the App Store.

As Hames explained to me, the Sleepio app is meant to create a cognitive therapy approach to improving the user’s sleep. That is, the app will ask the user questions about sleep patterns then provide information on how to improve. It’s the same kind of dialog one would have with a sleep therapist, but without the therapist, Hames explains.

The cognitive approach comes from Hames’ conviction that both the healthcare system and consumers often default to various types of pills to cure our problems.

“A few years ago I developed insomnia,” Hames told VentureBeat. “But my doctor just kept trying to give me sleeping pills, and I didn’t want to take pills.”

Cognitive therapy, on the other hand, worked. “I have a behavioral psych degree so I was looking for a way use that approach,” Hames said. “I was a using a book written by sleep expert Professor Colin Espie, and within weeks my insomnia was cured.”

Hames teamed up with widely known Oxford sleep researcher Espie to develop the line of questions, suggestions, and other information contained in the Sleepio app.

The point of the Sleepio app is to make these tried-and-true cognitive techniques more accessible and engaging, even fun. It takes a holistic approach, suggesting a personalized program that focuses on sleep schedule, thoughts, and lifestyle.

Not only does Espie’s research provide much of the content for the apps, but he inspired the app’s central character. When you open the app, you see an animation of a shortish, dark-haired, academic type — who speaks to you in a calming Scottish accent. He also has a funny little dog name Pavlov that has a habit of falling asleep unexpectedly.

Hames says that tests of the techniques suggested by the app have caused users to fall asleep 56 percent faster, have reduced nighttimes awakenings by 63 percent, and have boosted daytime energy and concentration by 58 percent in test patients.

Sleepio already can import sleep data from the Jawbone UP wearable, but the app doesn’t depend on wearables data to work. Wearables data (like sleep duration, wakeups, etc.) is just one input that can be used to inform the sleep advice generated by the app itself.

Hames says the app will get similar data from other sleep-tracking wearables that integrate with the HealthKit platform once it launches. And it will get much more interesting from in the future. The Sleepio app might begin to pull in things like caffiene intake data from HealthKit-connected diet apps, or exercise data from HealthKit-connected fitness apps. Diet and exercise have a marked effect on sleep, and data about those things could dramatically enhance Sleepio’s ability to improve users’ sleep.

“This just wasn’t possible before,” Hames says. He’s noticably excited about HealthKit, and believes it can really have a positive effect on big-picture health issues in the future. Hames and his team plan to build the HealthKit features back in to Sleepio once the platform is up and running.

And insomnia may be just the first problem that Big Health addresses with congitive therapy apps. Hames points out that other problems like depression and anxiety can be addressed the same way. So, yes, a “Depressio” app may be in Big Health’s future.

The Sleepio App is available for free on the App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app includes 7 days free access after which users choose an “Instant Sleep Help” program for $4.99 a month, or a “Long Term Sleep Improvement” program at $149 for 12 weeks access. They can also continue using Sleepio for free, which gives you access to the “Sleep Diary” and “Your Schedule” features only.

Big Health is backed by Index Ventures, Forward Partners, and several angel investors.

]]>0Big Health launches Sleepio app despite HealthKit delay, puts sleep coach in your phoneAttention good parents: Moms with Apps can help you screen what's on Junior's mobilehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/09/19/attention-good-parents-moms-with-apps-can-help-you-screen-whats-on-juniors-mobile/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/19/attention-good-parents-moms-with-apps-can-help-you-screen-whats-on-juniors-mobile/#commentsFri, 19 Sep 2014 14:00:09 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1554976The site offers a filtering tool for apps, where parents can choose device, age range, subject, and such characteristics as works without Internet, no in-app purchases or ads, or no links to social networks.
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The site offers a filtering tool for apps, where parents can select for a child’s device, age range, and subject of interest. These filters can also sift for apps that work without Internet, have no in-app purchases or ads, or have no links to social networks.

Ironically, although Moms with Apps does have a mobile Web version, it does not yet have an app version — but one is on the drawing board.

Over 1,000 apps — sporting such titles as Zoo Train, Partial Sums Addition, Princess Birthday Party Puzzles for Kids, and Photo Buttons — are currently offered on the site for iOS devices, Android phones or tablets, Kindle Fire, and Windows Phones. There’s also detailed information and screenshots for each.

To join Moms with Apps, app developers need to be a member of The App Association and to abide by the best practices guidelines, called the Know What’s Inside Checklist. No fee is required.

Items on the Checklist include privacy disclosures, thoughtful integration of links that lead out of the app, and compliance with COPPA. App developers who have complied are allowed to display the Know What’s Inside logo. About 270 app developers around the world have signed up to Moms with Apps.

The organization originated in 2009 as an informal Twitter-based group of mothers who were also app developers and who wanted to find kid-friendly choices, director Sara Kloek told VentureBeat.

Moms with Apps formally became part of ACT in mid-2013 and has now been launched as a separate for-profit LLC. ACT is still supporting the organization, although there is planning for some possible revenue streams.

Clients are apparently impressed, and Gucci, Lufthansa, Sony, and Chrysler are the company’s pilot partners for today’s launch.

The launch of Flipboard’s mobile video interactive ads dovetails with a growing chorus in the nascent video mobile ad sector, with U.S. ad firms and marketers spending about $1.5 billion on mobile video ads by the end of 2014, up from the $722 million spent last year.

The ecosystem for video advertising is slowly emerging, eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman told VentureBeat. He described interactive video ads as the last frontier in mobile.

Christine Cook, Flipboard’s advertising head, said in an email to VentureBeat late Monday:

“The type of advertising we’ve developed on Flipboard is focused on brand building; creating brand awareness, brand affinity and brand preference. As more and more people watch video on their mobile devices, we wanted to offer our advertisers the possibility of adding video to the beautiful full-page ads they’re already running in Flipboard.”

Mobile video ads accounted for nearly 19 percent of all digital video ad spending last year, a number that will climb to nearly 26 percent by the end of this year, according to Hallerman.

“And by the year 2018, the number will quadruple to over $6 billion. This is huge growth,” Hallerman said.

“Mobile video ads,” Hallerman said, “are important.”

Flipboard touts itself as a personal online publication that enables users to track and keep tabs from sources that interest them. With the app, you can, in essence, craft your own online magazine. You can check out Flipboard here.

Pango Mobile Parking, a parking-centric app whose patent was obtained, oddly, in 1997, raised $6.5 million in venture funding Friday. The startup, founded by entrepreneur Zion Harel in Israel, has global ambitions for the billion-dollar-plus parking industry and plans rapid expansion into U.S., European, and South American markets.

D.H. Rondor International led the financing.

Parking apps are springing up globally, some with mixed results. Rome-based Monkey Parking, for example, pulled their app from the market in San Francisco after they were threatened with a massive lawsuit by the city attorney: San Francisco was outraged that Monkey Parking was auctioning off spots on public streets via the app for money.

Pango Mobile Parking is different. The app allows you to pay for parking in garages and on the street. Although an app, the startup touts itself as a “Pay-by-Phone system for parking … With Pango, you control your parking session from your phone so, in less than 30 seconds, you pay for, extend or end a parking session,” Pango’s website says.

The upside of Pango, according to the company, is it claims to eliminate the need for change. According to Pango, “You don’t have to walk out from your car to activate parking, or to look for the closest paying station. When your parking session is about to expire, Pango sends you a reminder, helping you avoid costly parking tickets.”

Pango president Neil Edwards said the money would be used to penetrate new markets. “The technology was developed in Israel. We’re growing like weeds. The money is to expand in the U.S. We closed out $6.5 million which is great,” Edwards told VentureBeat.

Facebook users have been vocal about Messenger, an app now required in addition to the social network’s main mobile application to send messages. What is the point of separating one brand into multiple apps?

While users initially expressed concern about downloading a secondary app just to chat with friends, this is part of a telling trend: services à la carte.

Software is moving from large, multipurpose applications to discrete services that offer high value every time they’re used.

Facebook isn’t the only company that’s jumped off the prix-fixe ship. Google did it with Drive, splitting its editing capabilities into the separate Docs, Sheets, and Slides. LinkedIn rolled out a standalone Job Search app.

New products like these flood the software space every day, and single-purpose services are the only way to guarantee customers are getting a fully customized experience, with simple access to the features they actually need.

Here are the top reasons why all software providers will ultimately adopt the à la carte, customer-first approach.

1. Deliver the minimum viable product. Companies often brag about the multitude of features they have added to their products, but this often distracts from customer satisfaction, long-term usage, and sales. When it comes to generating value, minimalism is key.

The best software simplifies and speeds the user’s experience. This requires a laser focus on the user’s real needs. The app should contain the core features – and only the core features – required for deployment, offering simplicity with a dedicated, irreplaceable purpose. Winning software strives for direct purity like this.

2. Take more frequent innovation leaps. Lean software makes you nimbler when it comes to serving extreme value to customers. Task-oriented applications require fewer lines of code, lower memory requirements, and less coordination among departments and features, which speeds up the execution process and allows you to enact your ideas more often.

With a purpose-built service, your audience self-selects into a niche segment, making it easier to maintain a deep understanding of your user base. As a result, you can quickly identify and effectively act on their needs and tastes, even as they change over time.

3. Gain multiple entry points into the market. With one feature-packed platform, it’s difficult for salespeople to identify the right type of customer contact to pitch.

From the customer perspective, heavy “all-in-one” platforms are intimidating, as appealing as they may seem at first. Business leaders aren’t familiar with the specific challenges outside their own departments, and are typically ill-equipped to decide whether a monolithic bundle would be useful for their organization at the offered cost.

À la carte software, on the other hand, is easier to understand, adopt and consume, which not only quickens the buying cycle but also amplifies the quality of sales leads.

Take, for example, a human resource platform. If it’s split into discrete services, a company’s HR director can start at low initial spend with one feature, like a staff directory. After experimenting with the standalone directory, HR may decide to add additional services, such as time tracking and employee onboarding.

As the HR department continues to increase its usage – perhaps adopting a benefits portal, performance monitoring and project management tools – other departments within the company might start to engage with the software, too. In this way, a platform can incrementally take hold within an organization, administering pure, feature-specific value at every step.

4. Leverage the full power of the cloud. A few years ago, it would have been impossible to offer software services à la carte. Without a way to deliver single-purpose services, feature-bloated applications were the only option.

In the era of cloud computing, we has a huge central repository to store all information. So single purpose-built service apps can live in the cloud, and users can summon each, instantly and as needed, with no delivery costs or limits to scale.

In time, single-purpose software will win out, offering laser-focused functionality enabled by a powerful, highly connected ecosystem. Solutions that claim to be all-in-one are clunky, complicated, and tough to adopt.

The prix-fixe software menu is dead — and businesses and customers alike will be thankful for it.

Guy Nirpaz is the CEO of Totango. Prior to starting Totango he worked in the space of real-time big data as EVP of Engineering at GigaSpaces, and Chief Architect at Mercury.

Apple has tightened its rules around the use of health data by developers making apps that connect to the HealthKit aggregation platform.

The company has changed its privacy policy to state explicitly that developers can’t draw data from Apple’s platform for their apps, then pass it on in some form to marketers.

The policy change comes just before Apple announces the first new phones running iOS 8, which will include a feature called Health that will present HealthKit data.

The HealthKit platform can be thought of as a big ball of APIs (application programming interfaces) in the cloud that allow it to collect data a multitude of connected devices from smartwatches to scales. All this data will be presented in the Health app in iOS 8.

App developers can also access HealthKit data and combine it in creative ways within their own apps. The privacy change prevents them from aggregating the HealthKit data then packaging up for data brokers or marketers.

This is a logical move for Apple. Its interest in the consumer health space is selling more devices, not selling health data.

And yet the market for consumer health data is big and thriving in the USA. One data broker, IMS Health, says it aggregates data from 100,000 companies, some of which make apps.

Health data privacy advocates like Dr. Deborah C. Peel have been writing and discussing this problem for a long time. And people on Capitol Hill are becoming increasingly interested.

“If Apple is really doing this, if they’re really saying to developers that you can only use the data for the specific purpose that app provides the user, and that they can not share the data with anyone else without informed consent, that is the victory of victories,” Peel told VentureBeat.

“That’s what we’re seeking from all of the 100,000 of the companies that are now selling health data,” Peel says.

]]>0Apple prohibits HealthKit app developers from selling health dataHow app makers will trade Wi-Fi access for membershiphttp://venturebeat.com/2014/08/25/how-app-makers-will-trade-wi-fi-access-for-membership/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/25/how-app-makers-will-trade-wi-fi-access-for-membership/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 14:46:38 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1535594Guest:Expect to see plenty more Wi-Fi sponsorships over the next few years.
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Many of us in the wireless industry are familiar with the term ‘sponsored connectivity’. The premise behind it is that consumer-focused companies, such as app offerings or Web browsers, can offer free cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity in exchange for using their service. While the concept isn’t new, I do foresee it becoming a lot more pervasive in the years to come for day-to-day use among app providers in particular.

The popular social app SnapChat recently made a good effort at leveraging sponsored connectivity. The company provided app users attending Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), a 140,000-person electronic music festival in Las Vegas, with access to free Wi-Fi connectivity. However, the connectivity was only available within the SnapChat and official EDC application. While the plan was good in theory, it backfired.

Many users could not access a wireless connection because of network congestion, which is a very simple and prevalent problem in the wireless world. SnapChat’s Wi-Fi network could not withstand the amount of traffic it was receiving from such a large audience.

After SnapChat’s failed attempt at sponsored connectivity, why would other app providers pursue the same strategy? The answer is simple. App providers want to expand their user bases.

The best way to expand a user base is to offer unique value, and free connectivity is highly valued among consumers as most are concerned with data caps and overage fees. For services that aren’t subscription-based this is particularly attractive, as it opens new avenues for monetization. More users translate into more eyes to view advertisements and more behaviors to target for data collection. More ads can be pushed to even more users, which results in greater ad-spend and behavioral analytics that can be leveraged to improve the delivered service or sold to other companies.

Sponsored connectivity is a sound strategy, but the technology needs work to become truly beneficial for app providers. Even if more Wi-Fi access points were deployed at events similar to EDC, networks still would not be able to connect everyone. This leaves two viable approaches for app providers pursuing sponsored connectivity.

First, they could allocate Wi-Fi capacity. By dispersing connectivity in fair fashion across a population, this would allow most users some connectivity rather than making the Wi-Fi connection unavailable for the whole population. One way to disperse connectivity is to develop algorithms that dictate the number of uploads allocated to any specific user during a pre-determined time frame. For example, for X user, X number of uploads are pushed through per hour.

Alternatively, SnapChat could go the route of making automatic connections. They could hold onto an upload request if the network connection is unavailable. By using integrated app policies, the system could retry uploading a request every few minutes, basically enabling staggered connectivity. This solution is least aggravating to the end-user as it eliminates the need for manual re-tries. Policies may also be configured to retry using the cellular network, if that is acceptable to the user.

Aside from the two methodologies listed above, fundamental changes to network infrastructure can also contribute to the success of sponsored connectivity. While such solutions might better solve the capacity crunch, app providers such as SnapChat will not control them. In two to three years however, there will be a significant shift in network infrastructure due to new technologies being introduced.

Social messaging is a crowded market and new apps hit the market every day. Those looking to solidify their position in the market by monopolizing end-user adoption and viewership should consider sponsored connectivity. Consumers are increasingly concerned with rising data usage and overage charges, so any company to offer an alternative solution would unquestionably gain market share. Until some fundamental network changes occur, I foresee the app providers who can apply sponsored connectivity in day-to-day scenarios, outside of major events, to have the best shot at becoming leaders in the crowded social space.

(Note: The views expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my company, InterDigital.)

Volume Up is a regular column on consumer technology and digital ecosystems by Reticle Research principal analyst Ross Rubin.

With sophisticated mobile operating systems came the promise of “desktop-quality” apps. But recently, there’s been evidence that the piling on of features in such apps as Photoshop, iTunes, and Microsoft Office may not hold true in the mobile world.

And, paradoxically, this has been exemplified by apps for social networks, which are generally focused on integrating people, information, groups, and messaging. But, as the song goes, breaking up is hard to do, and the split off portions of key social apps have elicited different reactions from their users.

Facebook

Facebook Messenger has long been a popular app in the Apple app store, but it recently rocketed to the top of the charts when Facebook decided that it would discontinue supporting messaging in its flagship mobile app.

Facebook has indeed added a few new tricks to its messaging app that weren’t supported in the core experience. But of course, the blowback has been related to the forced change and the likely exasperation of having to deal with another messaging app alongside existing popular options that support one-to-one media swapping such as Skype, Snapchat, the engmatic Yo, and WhatsApp, the latter of which is already in Facebook’s fold.

Facebook likely wants to see its Messenger associated with this group of fast-movers in a hipper demographic as a hedge to its own Slingshot. However, it’s worth remembering that the category also includes such faded stars as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and BBM. There may also be latent concerns about setting a precedent of that may lead to even more messaging apps being launched out of services such as Twitter. One quasi-social app that isn’t following suit is real-world networking site Meetup, which just added messaging to its app.

Foursquare

The app that popularized the check-in long had a dilemma of how to move beyond its cult and key demographic of young, social adults. Foursquare was also stuck in something of a technology gap. Its founders knew that, with the pending arrival of technologies such as Bluetooth beacons, check-ins would one day be automated or redundant, but we’re not there yet. At the same time, it has seen increased interest from companies such as Apple working with Yelp as a provider of local business information.

Its answer was to launch a new app that portioned out the check-in and friend-finding to a new app called Swarm and made Foursquare more of a direct competitor to Yelp, albeit one infused with more of Foursquare’s social DNA. Curiously, Swarm relies heavily on your Facebook social graph and even the company’s new Messenger app for communication with contacts, despite the competitive history between the two companies.

The new pairing has a better clarity of purpose on both ends. Old hands have been grousing about changes to mayorships and the finer points of badges versus stickers, but Foursquare has grown up and it’s poised to attract more people who are willing to do the same.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn was relatively late to release both its mobile app and tablet app, but its native mobile efforts have improved over the years. It’s also branching out by releasing a pair of apps that provide a slicker window into parts of its service.

LinkedIn Job Search lets you save searches for quick surveys of new employment opportunities while LinkedIn Connected provides quick browsing through contacts for updates such as job anniversaries and title changes. (Coincidentally, a third-party app called Weave has recently provided yet another window into LinkedIn, allowing you to flag local people with whom you want to professionally network with Tinder-like swiping left or right.)

But, unlike with Facebook and Foursquare, there’s been no backlash. This is because the new features apps haven’t resulted in any new real functionality that isn’t in the core LinkedIn app and nothing’s been removed from that app. While the company may have played it safe by retaining the core experience of its mobile app, it risks the confusion that was spurred by Facebook’s Paper experiment. That app provided a slick, mobile-first overlay over a core portion of the Facebook user experience. Many who tried it seemed to like it, but few ultimately used it.

The motivations and methods for all three social network app carve-outs were different, but one thing they all share is a quest for mindshare versus dedicated competitors. If you see that icon on your Android home screen or iPhone dock, you’re far more likely to consider Facebook versus Snapchat to message, Foursquare versus Yelp to find a place, or LinkedIn versus Indeed to check for new opportunities.

]]>0Why breaking up is hard to do … for social apps like Facebook, Foursquare, and LinkedInWhisper launches digital platform for its Your Voice nonprofithttp://venturebeat.com/2014/08/14/whisper-launches-digital-platform-for-its-your-voice-nonprofit/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/14/whisper-launches-digital-platform-for-its-your-voice-nonprofit/#commentsThu, 14 Aug 2014 19:23:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1527618Whisper founders launch and invest in a non-profit site for those suffering from mental health problems.
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People divulge their deepest secrets on Whisper. While some of those secrets are harmless, others trend toward thoughts of self-harm and suicide. And that’s why the company founders had to do something about it.

Whisper founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks are launching a digital platform to accompany their nonprofit site, Your Voice, to help those requiring emotional support and assistance. The founders have set up a $1 million endowment to the cause already.

Since Whisper has already referred over 40,000 of its users to suicide hotlines, the need for this specialized kind of site was apparent. Heyward would even stay up late at night talking with people about their problems, going so far as to bring Brooks’ wife, Nicole Brooks, who is a registered family therapist, in for advice on more than one occasion.

Your Voice will now feature videos from users and those curated by admins that show people talking about how they’ve beaten anxiety, depression, and any other mental health problem. People are encouraged to share their stories, explore the provided resources, and chat with people going through the same kinds of problems they are. When the site launched in 2012, it served as an information site for depression and suicide prevention.

Whisper raised $36 million in a third institutional round of funding in May of this year. And back in September 2013, the company raised $21 million in VC funds. Whisper was founded in 2012 and is currently based in Santa Monica, Calif.

If you’re over the default Phone app on your iPhone, then you’re in luck.

Humin, a contacts app for iOS, launched today; and it’s smarter and a heck of a lot more intuitive than what you get with your iPhone out of the box.

Once Humin is installed, it’ll learn who you call the most and who’s the most relevant in your day-to-day life. This means you can say bye-bye to an alphabetized list and hello to contacts that are categorized by location, the day, and the time of day. It’s contextual and that means quicker access to the contacts you need when (and where) you need them.

This app also lets you search in a more intuitive way. Instead of searching by surname, you can search based on information about how you know a person. So, you could feasibly search, “She lives in L.A.” and you’ll get a tidy list of results that fit the bill. Humin can accomplish this by pulling data from a variety of sources via a connection graph. Some of these sources include Facebook, Gmail, and LinkedIn.

Once Humin gets its arrangements with U.S. carriers ironed out, it will be able to show your missed calls and voicemails right from within the app — no Phone app required.

Future developments might involve integrating the app with wearable devices and cars. The potential there for smart contacts is undeniable.

Humin is available in the U.S. today with a U.K. launch is expected sometime in the near future. The company was founded in 2013 in San Francisco. It currently has 24 employees and has Ankur Jain at the helm as CEO.